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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Only in Washington, D.C. can a proposed budget that increases
spending and borrowing every single year be considered to somehow reduce
the deficit. The latest Obama budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 — and how the Administration is spinning it — was no exception.

The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) baseline for 2013-2022
says outlays will total $47.053 trillion. Obama’s proposed budget takes
that to $46.959 trillion. Since spending actually increases every year
under Obama’s proposal, the only cut is off of the baseline — and
that’s just $94 billion of so-called “cuts”.

Meanwhile, OMB says revenues over the next ten years will total
$38.391 trillion. Under Obama’s proposal, that goes up to $40.274
trillion — an increase of $1.883 trillion in taxes, mostly on job
creators.
By our count, that’s about $20 of tax increases for every dollar of
“cuts,” and those are not even real cuts to the actual budget. Spending
would still increase every single year under Obama’s proposal.
Meanwhile, the tax hikes are real.
Get full story here.

Earlier this month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported
that America’s unemployment rate fell from 8.5 percent in December to
8.3 percent in January — its fifth consecutive monthly decline. The
agency also estimated that the U.S. economy created nearly a quarter of a
million new jobs last month — its highest output since last April.

According to the White House, this data provided “further evidence
that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn
since the Great Depression.”

Is this really the case, though? Scratch the surface of the “good
news” touted by these official statistics and you’ll find several
troubling indicators — including sharp increases in the number of
long-term unemployed and a labor force that’s shrinking to historic new
lows.

No wonder most Americans aren’t experiencing the economic “healing” that the White House claims is occurring all around them.

According to the BLS, 43 percent of America’s 12.8 million unemployed
workers have been out of a job for more than six months.
Two-and-a-half years ago that figure was below 30 percent. Moreover the
average unemployment duration now stands at 40 weeks — up
precipitously from a then-record high of 25 weeks two-and-a-half years
ago.

And with the federal government continuing to fund long-term
unemployment benefits in perpetuity, taxpayers are simultaneously
subsidizing and incentivizing this sustained joblessness.

“This crisis of long-term joblessness is unprecedented in the
post-war period,” The Economist noted last October, adding that “for the
first time in decades, jobless workers are more likely to drop out of
the (labor) force … than to get a job.”

This grim outlook isn’t likely to improve anytime soon, particularly
given the scant availability of construction work associated with
America’s still-reeling housing market.
Get full story here.

Whitney Houston's funeral service will be held Saturday in the church where she first showcased her singing talents as a child.

The owner of theWhigham Funeral Home in Newark said Tuesday that Houston's funeral will be held at noon at the New Hope Baptist Churchin Newark. The funeral home said that no wake would be held and that there would be no public memorial at Newark's Prudential Center, the sports arena that the family had discussed as a possible venue.

The 48-year-old Houston died Feb. 11 at a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., just hours before she was set to perform at producer Clive Davis' pre-Grammy Awards bash. Officials say she was underwater and apparently unconscious when she was pulled from a bathtub.

After
an autopsy Sunday, authorities said there were no indications of foul
play and no obvious signs of trauma on Houston. It could be weeks,
however, before the coroner's office completes toxicology tests to
establish the cause of death.

(Reuters)
- An Iranian man was seriously wounded in Bangkok Tuesday when a bomb
he was carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off, police and
government officials said, but they declined to speculate on whether he
was involved with any militant group.

Shortly
before, there had been an explosion in a house the man was renting in
the Ekamai area of central Bangkok, and shortly afterwards, another
blast on a nearby road.

"The police have control of the
situation. It is thought that the suspect might be storing more
explosives inside his house," government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng
told reporters.

The three blasts came a day after bomb attacks
targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia. Israel accused Iran
and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind those attacks.

Hezbollah
is a Shi'ite Islamist group backed by Syria and Iran that is on the
official U.S. blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations.

After Eva Hoake, editor of Dutch magazine, Jackie, resigned after pop-star, Rihanna,
was called a “nigga-bitch” in a fashion spread, the world was just
beginning to revert back to normal. Then, Rihanna issued a scathing
“F-You” to Jackie on Twitter, and the publisher, Yves Gijrath, said that they never should have apologized in the first place, reports Villamedia.

Gijrath says that Hoake should have stood firm behind her editorial decision, instead of bending to the controversial pressure:

[T]here is nothing wrong in the magazine. [Hoeke]
presented it as a joke, but it most certainly was not a joke. It was an
interpretation [of a fashion style]. [...] She should have said: “we did
not realize this interpretation is such a touchy subject. We never
meant any harm and offer our sincere and upright apologies.” But because
of all the fuss, Eva started to wiggle in all directions, and therefore we have come to the conclusion her credibility has been undermined.

Gijrath claims that Rihanna has been invited to respond, but that they would not be printing a retraction. “We will not be silenced,” he said. “People are totally off limits when calling both the magazine Jackie and Eva Hoeke racist. Jackie is even produced by an editorial staff that is of mixed origins.”

A man who is a self-described “Texas Redneck” says that he has been
harassed repeatedly by Texas police because his granddaughter is black.
Scott Henson often volunteers to babysit his granddaughter and claims
that he is the victim of “babysitting while white.” On his blog,
“Grits for Breakfast,” Henson
says that police have been racially-profiling he and his granddaughter
for years, and getting very aggressive when they come after him.

This week, Henson was handcuffed and detained by police. His
granddaughter was separated from him after someone called and said that
they saw a black girl being kidnapped by a white man. Henson admits
that when officers stop him, he
is terse and impatient with them. He says that he is insulted that
they are asking him questions just because his granddaughter is of a
different race and that he has no obligation to stop.
Mr. Henson is a retired political consultant and journalist who runs a blog about the Texas criminal justice system.

He describes his last encounter with police and his granddaughter, whom he refers to as “Ty.”
Ty edged up the hill away from the officers, crying. One of them
called out in a comforting tone that they weren’t there to hurt her, but
another officer blew up any good will that might have garnered by
brusquely snatching her up and scuttling her off to the back seat of one of the police cars,” he wrote.
Henson also says that officers refused to call his wife and other who
can verify the relationship. He was eventually released with
apologies, but there is no word if he is going to file any kind of legal action.

Media mogul Tyler Perry has offered his assistance to the family of Whitney Houston. Her
body is being flown back to New Jersey, where her funeral is being
arranged. When Perry heard about her death, he offered his jet as a
service to the family, who took him up on his offer.

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